Gregg Fairbrothers
From Idea to Success
Ask a Michael Jordan or a Steve Jobs how they do what they do? And more than likely, they won’t have a definitive answer. They just do it! The best athletes and most admired entrepreneurs know that life is an ongoing experiment; and some work and a lot more turn out to be lessons that will be applied to future endeavors. Gregg Fairbrothers was one of those entrepreneurs; he spent 23 years building companies in the oil and gas industry. Then in the summer of 1999, he decided to head back to his alma mater, Dartmouth College, and started to search for “an idea where I could do something socially valuable-pay my debt to society.”
In the summer of 2000, the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network – DEN – was born to help people learn to be more entrepreneurial and to turn their ideas into reality. What impressed me most about Gregg’s approach is that he is not as focused on the idea as he is on the person; “I don’t think it’s important what I think about their idea. Most of the time, what do I know anyway? ….. I would much rather help them learn how to think about their ideas, how to make smart decisions, and if they want to follow those ideas with passion, how to make those ideas come alive.”
Gregg’s book – From Ideas to Success: The Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network Guide for Start-Ups – is about action. It’s a framework that any aspiring entrepreneurs can follow and increase the odds of success. Hear Gregg discuss the best of the program….